VMware Communities: ESX 3.5 hangs on install - Uncompressing Linux... Ok, Booting the

Reply Re: ESX 3.5 hangs on install - Uncompressing Linux... Ok, Booting the Kernel. Feb 8, 2008 11:30 AM

in response to: sfitgeek

sfitgeek 19 posts since
Jan 26, 2008

Ok, so I tried a different video card, didn't work.

I also tried using a different SAS controller card, LSISAS3041E-R, turned off the internal controller, but also didn't work.

I tried swapping out the memory, that didn't work.

Ran the Dell diagnostics disk to test all PC components, passed with flying colors.

I think there must be a chip or something on the main board that isn't compatible, I can't think of anything else. Not sure what to try next...

Reply Re: ESX 3.5 hangs on install - Uncompressing Linux... Ok, Booting the Kernel. Feb 8, 2008 7:35 PM

in response to: sfitgeek

Schorschi 685 posts since
Jul 6, 2005

At this point, I would contact Dell and get them to deep dive the issue. This really does feel like something, given all you have tried, is out of tolerance. Geez, really wish I had 690 in the lab to try to figure this out! LOL Love working on these types of quirks.

Reply Re: ESX 3.5 hangs on install - Uncompressing Linux... Ok, Booting the Kernel. Feb 13, 2008 1:47 PM

in response to: Schorschi

Michael.Fowler 7 posts since
May 16, 2007

Not really sure this is a Dell thing as much as a VMware thing, given that we're ruled out most everything except for the fact that the 690 itself is not on the HCL for ESX. Surely the HCL doesn't impose a hard stop such as the one we're experiencing here based soley on system designator? I mean, how would you actually test and certify new systems for the HCL. Aside from the fact that one system is on the HCL and one is not, the actual hardware (CPU, chipsets, controllers, etc.) and the drivers, etc. for the 690 are virtually identical to those used on the Dell blades where ESX works just fine. More likely may be the fact that the 690, as a workstation, supports the full PCI Express bus (particularly for various graphics cards) via a graphic riser. That could be it, the PEG riser vs the actual video card itself. If you disable PEG support in the 690 BIOS and plug in a plain, vanilla video card in one of the PCI slots instead of the PCIe slots, that should confirm this hypothesis.

OR - Perhaps someone from VMware who's monitoring this group could help us understand before more effort is expended needlessly?

Reply Re: ESX 3.5 hangs on install - Uncompressing Linux... Ok, Booting the Kernel. Feb 12, 2008 8:27 PM

in response to: Michael.Fowler

sfitgeek 19 posts since
Jan 26, 2008

That's a good guess Michael and I thought it was the PCI-E video card as well, but my system doesn't actually use the riser card, it just plugs straight into the PCI-E slot. But for good measure I tried a regular PCI video card, praying this was the issue, and it still hangs at the same spot. Ha! It was actually pretty funny, but I was glad to be able to rule that out as well.

But I think I may have actually found the problem, I downloaded the latest version of Dell's Server Assistant CD to see if I could get that going and then use it to install ESX 3.5, it's also Linux, and interestingly it went on to say the following:

Ready.
Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel.
Booting the system, please wait...
Mounting the server assistant installation media...
Having problems mounting server assistant media.
There may be a problem with the media.

I'm not a Linux guy (wish I was), but I'm guessing it can't see the disk? Very interesting, I am only using one disk, a Seagate (ST3300655SS) 300 GB 15,000 RPM SAS drive. I tried attaching it directly to the SAS1068-IR integrated controller, and when that didn't work, I bought a controller that was on the HCL, an LSI 3041E, but it didn't like that either. And I tried just using a regular 500GB 7200 RPM SATA drive, but still the same thing. I must be missing something here.

Do I need to have at least 2, or 3 disks in a raid configuration? Is this drive maybe too fast, or it just plain doesn't see/support it? It see's it in the BIOS no problem, and I've tried making it the primary boot device and hitting F12 to then manually start the install CD, no love.

Is there a way in Linux that I can manually set the boot device or mount the media? This has to be the issue and would explain why it hangs immediately, it can't mount the install files to any media.

Reply Re: ESX 3.5 hangs on install - Uncompressing Linux... Ok, Booting the Kernel. Feb 13, 2008 8:28 AM

in response to: sfitgeek

Michael.Fowler 7 posts since
May 16, 2007

Same as my experiences - tried multiple drives / controllers etc. No joy. Same experience with both ESX 3.01 and with 3.5.

No way the drives are too fast or anything because they're supported by ESX on other systems. There is no requirement for multiple drives, RAID stripes or anything else.

Also, I took an SAS drive from one of my blades that had ESX loaded and running on it just fine, disconnected all other drives in the 690 and attached this. Exactly the same behavior, so it's not just an installation thing either. Same experience when it tried to boot an installed version of ESX.

I believe you're right about the loader not seeing the disk for some reason. Could possibly be a device name issue SDA vs SDB, but I think that's unlikely as I have multiple systems running with SDB as primary drive. Not a boot priority issue either as I've changed the BIOS settings to eliminate that possibility.

To answer your question about manually setting the boot device or mounting the media, yes, that's certainly possible. The tricky part is intercepting the process before it tries to boot the kernel. We may have to see about installing some version of Linux on the system and then manually decomposing the installation, making the corrections and rebuilding the kernel. This would take some investigation to sort out.

I still think we need to get someone from VMware involved and I'll pursue that angle.

More later ...

-mf

Reply Re: ESX 3.5 hangs on install - Uncompressing Linux... Ok, Booting the Kernel. Feb 13, 2008 11:58 PM

in response to: Michael.Fowler

sfitgeek 19 posts since
Jan 26, 2008

Ya I don't think it's a drive compatibility issue either. I have been using our companies Dell Gold Support to trouble shoot the issue and they assigned me a Linux specialist, here's what he's said so far:

I tried the version of ESX I have here on a 690 on the SAS controller as both separate disks and as a raid 0 and the installer passed the ‘uncompressing linux' both times with no issues. I also have 2 gb ram, an nvidia card, 2 sata drives on the sas controller, but only have 2 dual core's not quads. That looks like the only real difference with the system I have here and yours. You might want to try installing in text mode if you haven't tried that already (type: esx text at the boot prompt). You could still try moving the drives off the sas controller and putting them on the sata controller just to make sure that isnt a problem. There is no performance hit on the drives using the sata over sas. Also try switching the operations as I mentioned from AHCI to ATA and see if that helps.

Usually Dell ships the sata drives on the SAS controller, if you really wanted to you could try moving those drives to the SATA ports (labeled SATA 0 and 1 on the motherboard), turning off the SAS controller in the bios and changing the sata operation to ATA and trying it that that way. Of course whatever OS your have on your drives will not work if you pull them off of the SAS controller.

I will get a 690 today and see if I get the same results on the SAS and then see if they work on the SATA ports and let you know how it goes. Another customer is having the same type of install issues but on a 390 and he asked VM and this is what he told me...

VMWare said that ESX is not supported on Precisions, only certain Power Edges

They said I could install VMWare Server on Windows

and then create a VM and install ESX on that VW and it might work

I've been crazy busy lately with work and school, but will fool around with the disk setup again this weekend and the settings Ian suggested above.

Thanks Michael, appreciate all your help man, so do you have a 690 that won't run ESX as well?

Ralph

Reply Re: ESX 3.5 hangs on install - Uncompressing Linux... Ok, Booting the Kernel. Mar 3, 2008 9:18 AM

in response to: sfitgeek

Michael.Fowler 7 posts since
May 16, 2007

Sorry for the delayed response, I've been out flat on my back with pneumonia for the past two weeks.

To your question, yes, I've actually got 2 x 690 systems (dual quads, 32GB memory, SAS & SATA drives) that we REALLY want to use for VMware development under ESX.

More later, after I catch up.

Reply Re: ESX 3.5 hangs on install - Uncompressing Linux... Ok, Booting the Kernel. Mar 3, 2008 8:09 PM

in response to: Michael.Fowler

sfitgeek 19 posts since
Jan 26, 2008

Wow Michael, sorry to hear you were sick, I've been hearing about how the flu is really bad this year, hope you're feeling better now.

I gave up on ESX and just installed Server 2008 Enterprise with Hyper-V virtualization built in, I probably shouldn't mention it on this board, I wanted to use VMware but it just wouldn't work on my system.

Server 2008 is very nice though, installed with all drivers and no updates were needed, the Hyper-V role is cool too, looks just like VMware server, but it only supports Windows machines at this point, not Linux etc.

Good luck my friend, two months of trying every conceivable configuration wouldn't work, even the Dell Linux expert said other 690 customers were having the same "hang" issue and there was no explanation.

Thanks for all your help Michael and take care.

Reply Re: ESX 3.5 hangs on install - Uncompressing Linux... Ok, Booting the Kernel. Mar 4, 2008 10:00 AM

in response to: sfitgeek

tys 8 posts since
Nov 7, 2006

The issue is on ESX 3.0.1, but looks at least 3.0.1 could install on BIOS A03?

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=pw_cdrom&thread.id=1749
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Put my hard drive in an older 690 owned by a coworker (with different 2-way procs and older A03 BIOS), where I was able to successfully install ESX. Moved the hard drive back to my machine, and the main ESX kernel boot still hangs at the same spot.

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Reply Re: ESX 3.5 hangs on install - Uncompressing Linux... Ok, Booting the Kernel. Mar 4, 2008 11:40 AM

in response to: tys

sfitgeek 19 posts since
Jan 26, 2008

Ha-ha! Yeah I've seen that post as well, too bad it won't work for you, that was a good idea. I tried every weekend for 2 months and finally gave up, I realize now that if the hardware isn't on the hcl, it probably won't work, didn't realize it was that particular because I was able to install it on a couple laptops, a desktop etc.

Oh well...

Reply Re: ESX 3.5 hangs on install - Uncompressing Linux... Ok, Booting the Kernel. Mar 4, 2008 11:51 PM

in response to: sfitgeek

tys 8 posts since
Nov 7, 2006

My Precision 690(Dual Quad Core Xeon) has quite same problem. May be this is Quad core issue. At least two machines (in the Post in Dell forum, and your Dell Support's) which are Dual core successfully passed the installation. I have no Dual core Xeon, so I can't test it...

Reply Re: ESX 3.5 hangs on install - Uncompressing Linux... Ok, Booting the Kernel. Mar 5, 2008 5:57 AM

in response to: sfitgeek

tys 8 posts since
Nov 7, 2006

I figured out the problem.

Now 3i is up and running on my Precision 690.

I tried the installation from an external USB CD/DVD and confirmed it complete the all process. Also I changed CD/DVD drive connection from SATA socket to HDD socket on the motherboard then tried with Internal CD/DVD installation also worked. Looks as long as CD/DVD is connected on one of the SATA connector, installation doesn't work.
However I still can't get CD/DVD worked on ESX. ESX says "No Devices available" on the Host Device.

There are no actual impact for the ESX operation because ISO image mount works fine of course.

tys

Reply Re: ESX 3.5 hangs on install - Uncompressing Linux... Ok, Booting the Kernel. Mar 5, 2008 7:26 AM

in response to: tys

Michael.Fowler 7 posts since
May 16, 2007

This is very interesting, Taisuke. I'll check this out on a couple of my dual-quad core 690s when I get back in town this weekend. We'd all spent so much time trying to identify which component was causing the incompatibility, but it would seem we may have overlooked something really basic. I'll repost once I've verified your solution with my systems as well.

Thanks!

-mf

Reply Re: ESX 3.5 hangs on install - Uncompressing Linux... Ok, Booting the Kernel. Mar 5, 2008 10:18 AM

in response to: tys

sfitgeek 19 posts since
Jan 26, 2008

Huh, that's interesting tys, I also have a SATA CD/DVD drive connected to the the second SATA connector, and two drives connected to the HDD connectors, so maybe that's it? But I know at different times I tried IDE, SATA and external DVD drives with no luck.

But I'll give it another shot when I get home and will let you know if that's the issue with me as well.

Hey thanks for jumping in and lending a hand tys -

Reply Re: ESX 3.5 hangs on install - Uncompressing Linux... Ok, Booting the Kernel. Mar 5, 2008 11:11 PM

in response to: tys

sfitgeek 19 posts since
Jan 26, 2008

Wow, I guess I should have tried ESX 3i sooner because it installed perfectly. My hats off to you Taisuke, you figured out what we couldn't for like two months. I can't begin to tell you how happy I am that you got my 690 up and running, I was playing around with Hyper-V, but it's terrible and wasn't usable, only allowed for 1 cpu and 1 nic, and vm's kept freezing up.

I don''t know what else to say but thank you again, I owe you one.

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